Ok, so our two days were actually four days apart, but hey,
who’s counting! Since we knew we were going to Seattle (area) before we left
Vancouver we looked up what to do with kids. The answer is lots of things! Seattle
is a very kid friendly place, many activities to do and places to see. So much so that Seattle has a CityPass you
can purchase, which gets you into 6 of the most popular (or iconic) sites for
one discounted price. Great! Except, then you want to go see all those
sights to get your money’s worth. So, we
planned for a couple days sight-seeing.
A week or so should give us plenty of time to see
everything! What I didn't know at the time was that we would be staying 45
minutes from downtown Seattle (because everything is at least 30 minutes from
Seattle, it seems). It’s not that far,
distance wise, but between busy highways and crazy twisty, turny roads, lakes
and arms of ocean, it takes some time to get anywhere here. Metro Seattle is quite large, and there are tons
of smaller communities and acreages just out of the metro area, so rush-hour
traffic is the kind you want to avoid. That meant we weren't going to do any
spur of the moment jaunts – hence the break in the middle of our sightseeing
days.
Anyway, back to the good stuff.
Day one: Friday. We
followed the GPS from Duvall, where we are staying to downtown Seattle, getting
quite frustrated by said GPS’s inability to get us those last few blocks to
find a parking spot. There aren't many places to park this beast of a long-box
dually. I finally relied on the internet and found us a lovely spot in the
parking lot at the Seattle Center, which is exactly where we were trying to
go! I think we spent nearly an hour driving
downtown trying to find a spot before that. Yeesh! That whole darned parking
thing out of the way, we could finally start checking the place out!
Our first stop of the day -the Space Needle - a rather neat
looking relic from the ’62 World’s Fair. A short (time – not distance!)
elevator ride up the outside of the Needle brought us to the observation decks.
Morgan thought it was very high! There’s
an outside (open air) ring and an inside ring to view the city from, and even
though it was a cloudy day, we had a pretty good view of the area. After a brief circuit of the outside ring, and
a look through the viewing telescopes, we went inside. I think Morgan wanted in most of all – evidently
the height and being outside bothered him much more here than at the CalgaryTower (which is interesting, considering he had a blast there laying on the
glass floor, looking straight down at the street far below). Inside he was fine, and we all checked out
the many displays and interactive boards detailing the geographical and
cultural features of Seattle. The most
interesting to me was the 360’ 24-hour time-lapse view, which could be advanced
minute by minute or in chunks of time. Once
we’d had our fill of the skyline we rode the elevator back down and set off for
the Pacific Science Center, which is a hop, skip and a very short walk down the
path from the Space Needle.
On the way over we took note of the Chihuly Garden and Glass, a beautiful blown glass art display on a gigantic scale. What we could see looked breathtaking, but the thought of my dear monkeys near all that glass made Bob & I shudder and so we just looked but did not enter. The Science Center is much more up their alley! Our CityPass tickets included entry to one Imax movie, so we chose the only one available at that time – Jerusalem, which was quite interesting, and captivated the children’s attention more than I thought it might (but I really should know better – large scale film, music and a darkened room are perfect ways to engage both Morgan & Lily). The Science Center is quite sizable and we didn't actually see it all before it closed. Starting off, there are several interactive water displays in the courtyard and Morgan helped some boys get a big rock ball rolling on 5 psi of water pressure. It was pretty neat to watch, and I was really happy to see how they all worked together to get it moving. After they’d left – and the rock had stopped moving, I tried rolling it. It was really hard!
Making our way inside we
checked out the space exhibit, and then Lily and I looked at the bugs (black
widows!) while Bob & Morgan went into the human body section (where Morgan
apparently memorized all there is to know about sleep! – now if only he’d apply
that knowledge). We joined up for a planetarium presentation and then back out
for more exploring. Together again to watch our Imax movie and then we all
played with the exhibits in the music section.
I liked the singing bowls best. At that point we discovered the Center
would be closing in 15 minutes (Yikes! Where did the afternoon go?) A quick jaunt through the Butterfly garden an
then it was time to leave. On the way out Lily and I realized how much we hadn't
seen or done, but it was too late to go look. Ah well. There are lots of Science Centers,
and I’m sure we’ll end up at a few more on our journey.
Everyone was hungry, so we walked a few blocks to The Rock, a local restaurant, for a yummy supper, and then drove the 45 minutes
back to the trailer (having only one navigating mishap in the process). What a long
day! The kids got to bed late and so did we, and we knew we’d need a slower schedule
the next day to catch up and better plan our next outing into Seattle… 
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